Finally, we need to dry up the funding for terrorist groups, and the mosques, schools and charities that support them. And that means working to end our addiction to oil. It is disgusting to listen to Republican politicians lecturing President Obama about how he has to stay the course in Afghanistan while they don’t have an ounce of courage to vote to increase the gasoline tax or renewable energy standards that would reduce the money we’re sending to the people our soldiers are fighting.

Frank Rich conceives of a plan for the Republicans to cut taxes and not grow the deficit:

[Obama] could start by offering them what they want, the full Bush tax cuts, in exchange for a single caveat: G.O.P. leaders would be required to stand before a big Glenn Beck-style chalkboard — on C-Span, or, for that matter, Fox News — and list, with dollar amounts, exactly which budget cuts would pay for them.

Maureen Dowd on George W. Bush’s upcoming book:

Rummy and Cheney knew how to play W.; when they offered to resign, he was so impressed with their loyalty, he let them stay. Besides, W. writes, “there was no obvious replacement for Don.” How about … anybody?

Nicholas Kristof points out that we’re looking more like a banana republic. Send for the rum drinks:

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.